As silver halide color photographic materials, ones containing three color couplers that will couple with the oxidized product of an aromatic primary amine color-developing agent to form respectively yellow, magenta, and cyan are most common.
Of these, as magenta couplers, pyrazolotriazole magenta couplers described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,067 are preferable in view of color reproduction, because they form azomethine dyes, which are not great in harmful subsidiary absorption near 430 nm, and they are also preferable because they are low in the formation of yellow stain in the color-unformed part that will be caused by heat and humidity.
However, the azomethine dye formed from such magenta couplers has a problem in that its fastness to light is low.
As techniques for improving the light resistance of the above pyrazoloazole magenta couplers, improved techniques using spiroindane compounds described, for example, in JP-A ("JP-A" means unexamined published Japanese patent application) No. 118141/1974, phenol compounds or phenol ether compounds described, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,588,679 and JP-A Nos. 262159/1985 and 282845/1986, metal chelate compounds described in JP-A NO. 97353/1985, silyl ether compounds described in JP-A No. 164743/1985, and hydroxycumarone compounds described in JP-A No. 177454/1986 were found, and these are effective to a certain level, yet they are not satisfactory.
According to prior techniques, including the above techniques, an adequately improved effect, enough particularly to satisfy light fastness of color-formed dye images simultaneously in the high-density region and the low-density region, could not be obtained, and a technique for improving light fastness of color-formed dye images over the whole region from the high-density part to the low-density part in a balanced manner has been sought.